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Sunday, September 7, 2008

On the way to running to my bus stop this morning (as usual), a tiny bunny rabbit ran along with me, sort of. It actually was a bit ahead of me which spurred me on to run faster, being the competitive person that I am. I tried to outrun the rabbit. I actually did it and felt victorious because the rabbit stopped first and I passed it right by.

This "event" jogged a long-time memory of something I used to do when I was around 4th-5th grade. I was never much of a bike rider, partly because we weren't allowed to really go anywhere on our bikes except our own street. At least we didn't. In my head I imagined a finish line up about 6 houses from my driveway. We lived near the end of a street so when a car turned onto our street, I would zip down the drive and head for the "finish line," racing against the car. Sometimes I won, sometimes I lost so felt it was a fair race.

This got me thinking of some other silly things we used to do for entertainment as kids. On hot days when we were just sitting on the porch, we would play "Who You Going to Marry?" This is really just people watching. We took turns and if someone walked by or drove by when it was your turn, that was who you would marry and the kind of car you would have. Very simple game, the only exception was that my brother got all the women. Even as kids we knew marriage was between a man and woman! Too bad adults always complicate things.

Another fun game we used to do in our backyard that really destroyed what little grass we had didn't even have a name. I loved ball and would bounce a rubber ball against the garage and field it and throw again. This is how I practiced fielding. Well, my friend and sisters and brother started riding their bikes threw my little practice session and it turned into a fun game. They would try not getting hit with the ball and I would try to hit them with it when it bounced of the garage--I didn't throw directly at them. After all, that would be too easy!

Swing sets can be made more fun too. Just swinging is okay, but I am one who likes games. When we'd go to the park where there was a swing set, three of us would swing with one of us standing at each end of the set. We would roll a ball, similar to the kind used in dodge ball under the swings, trying to get it all the way through. The ones on the swings would try to kick it as it went by, scoring a point if they succeeded. After awhile, we took turns rolling the ball through and whoever had the most points after everyone had a turn throwing, won. Very simple, but really fun!

I didn't care for swimming but found a fun use of our backyard pool. It was fun to play with my army men in the water. They never sank and we could make them swim by making waves in the water. I'd use the floating styrofoam boards as islands. Of course, army men were fun to play with on land too, but most kids do that. In the water was different.

I had quite a few marbles too. My brother and I would sometimes play marble war. We split the marbles in half and set them up in a formation at either end of a carpeted room. Then one at a time, we would roll one marble our and aim at the other's marble to try to hit the other's marble first. When your marble got hit, it was eliminated. The one with marbles left the longest was the winner.

Gerard liked playing baseball every day, hide-n-seek in the dark with a flashlight outside with his friends (called it "Spotty") and some kind of tackle game which he was very good at because he was so big. It took four kids to get him down so that was one game where he was always chosen early!

Took me back in time as well...I have been visiting your blog every now and then and I just realized that you have (almost) the same names as my parents-in-law. They're Karen and Gerald! You must be thinking I am weird, haha, but I thought it was cute.

I wonder if kids even do things like this anymore. It seems as though there are so many more organized things for kids now that they don't know how to amuse themselves except for the video games (we didn't have those when I was a kid).